Less than 200 years ago, London reeked so badly it got a nickname we remember even now: the Great Stink.
There was no sewage network in 1858, so excrement from everyone living there was washed into the Thames, either directly or via cesspits and smaller urban tributaries.
As a heatwave that summer warmed the faeces coursing through the capital, it enveloped residents in a haze of fumes so foul it prompted the construction of a vast network of waste pipes still in use today.
This story is meant to be part of history books now we have sewers and treatment works, but new data shows hundreds of toilets are flushing directly into rivers in London, despite the problem being known in some cases for years.
Ben Morris, who volunteers to don waders and gloves to pull sanitary towels and wet wipes from the River Brent on a regular basis, warned that without effective action London’s sewerage revolution risks going backwards.
While we’re not quite at the point of people simply flinging their chamber pots into the street (as they did in the early 1800s), the extent of sewage pollution in the capital is worse than many would imagine.
Ben, a trustee of Brent River Park and founder of Clean Up the River Brent, told Metro that widespread plumbing errors are turning urban rivers into ‘drains’ with no clear playbook for how to resolve the problem.
He compared the current situation to the Great Stink, and while thankfully this was hyperbole, the Victorian era’s depictions of Dirty Old Father Thames living in a swamp of filth may not be completely outdated.
Why did the Great Stink prompt action on sewage?
It definitely helped that the Houses of Parliament is right on the riverside, so there was no escape from the stench.
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With temperatures reaching 30°C and staying high for weeks, the baking filth from sewage left on the river banks became so overpowering that it was reported people vomited just by walking nearby.
MPs didn’t even want to come to work, as at that time it was believed that the stink of human waste could spread disease such as cholera, which had spread several times in the decades previously.
It wasn’t yet known that drinking contaminated water was the major source of sickness, so the odour itself was seen as a health hazard.
The foul miasma was the subject of despairing cartoons and news reports, with those who could afford it fleeing for the countryside where the air was fresh, and those left behind soaking their curtains in chlorinated lime bleaching powder.
MPs at work could turn a blind eye, but they couldn’t shut off their sense of smell, so legislation was swiftly passed to construct a vast underground pipe network which is still in use today.
A bill proposed by prime minister Benjamin Disraeli to fund a new sewer network became law in just 18 days.
How did Joseph Bazalgette tackle the stench?
The Victorian engineer designed a vast network of underground tunnels made from bricks, to allow waste water to be carried away downstream.
Work began in 1859 and was completed in 1875, with pumping stations at Deptford and Abbey Mills helping the process along, and the River Fleet diverted underground to become part of the sewers.
Forward-thinking Bazalgette insisted that the tunnels had much more capacity than was needed at the time, to be able to manage as the city’s population increased.
He also specified that the tunnels should be made from water-resistant Portland cement, a relatively new material, to withstand conveying sewage for longer.
It is these decisions that mean his system is still in use today, although it is coming under strain with a population pushing nine million people.
What is being done now?
A new ‘super sewer’, the Tideway Tunnel, started working last month and is due to be at full capacity by next year, aimed at taking some strain from the creaking network and reducing sewage spills from storm overflows.
But this will not help when the problem is buildings being plumbed into the wrong pipe due to construction errors.
Thames Water has a Surface Water Outfall Programme (SWOP) to identify misconnections, which can range from a single dishwasher wrongly plumbed to an entire block of flats.
Thousands of homes across the capital are thought to have some form of faulty plumbing resulting in river pollution, and developers or freeholders have a responsibility to fix errors once they are notified.
But if they don’t, it can be hard to work out who should foot the bill after that, whether it be councils, the water company, central government, or someone else.
Local authorities have the power to enforce regulations, and have done so in some cases, such as when Enfield Council successfully took legal action against a landlord to rectify a misconnection in Haringey in 2018.
Campaigners have called for clear lines of accountability and funding to make sure misconnections are quickly sorted out.
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